IndyCar Expands 2013 Calendar, Saves Money with Testing Limitations

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The IZOD IndyCar Series continues its slow climb back to the place it once held on the national sporting radar with a smart new calendar and budget-minded changes to its testing regulations.

After experiment with the doubleheader concept at the 1.5-mile Texas oval in 2011, the series announced a schedule for 2013 with 16 venues, including three Saturday/Sunday doubleheader events that will push the calendar out to 19 races.

Most of the changes made for next year involve adding new venues (a return to the Pocono tri-oval and to Houston for a street race around Reliant Park), over serving with two races per weekend at three street courses (Detroit's Belle Isle, Toronto and Houston), and improving its television package.

With most of its races broadcast on the relatively unknown NBC Sports Network (the artist formerly known as Versus, and before that, the Outdoor Life Network), IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard pulled off a minor coup with its partners at ABC by getting the channel to consolidate a tight six-race package that will air starting with the Indy 500.

Compared to IndyCar's spotty presence on ABC in recent years, packaging a string of races on network TV to start the summer could be the biggest achievement of all for the series next year.

With costs for its new-for-2012 Dallara DW12 chassis and an overall spike in operating expenses, IndyCar also unveiled a more restrictive set of testing regulations for 2013.

To give its teams the time needed to fully understand the inner workings of the DW12 and the new 2.2-liter turbocharged engines, IndyCar placed very few limitations on test dates through 2012. That move was perfect for those teams carrying larger budgets, but also allowed some of those teams to spend themselves into financial peril.

At $50,000 per day, some multi-car teams accrued 75 days of testing—a staggering sum of $3.75 million—at the high end, while others came in at half (or less) of that sum.

In general terms, teams will now be held to a few days of private testing, a limited number of open tests where all teams are invited and, in a change that embraces a concept employed by the ALMS, some of those open tests will be held a day or two before the start of a race weekend.

For teams traveling to race at Mid-Ohio, for example, they'll have the ability to show up and test between 24-48 hours before the start of official practice, rather than ship the entire team out to test at the track weeks prior to the event.

Along with the changes to its presence on ABC, IndyCar also deserves credit for cutting costs through a smarter approach to testing.